Lynne Cherry

Who is Lynne Cherry?

Lynne Cherry is an American writer and illustrator of nature-themed children's books and a film producer. In 2009 she was designated a Women's History Month Honoree by the National Women's History Project.

Born in Philadelphia, Cherry attended the Tyler School of Art and Yale University. She has served as director of the Center for Children's Environmental Literature, and has also been an artist-in-residence for the Princeton Environmental Institute, the World Wildlife Fund, and the Smithsonian Institution. One of her best-known books is The Great Kapok Tree, a picture book about the Amazon rainforest. Other books include Flute's Journey and A River Ran Wild.

Lynne has recently turned her attention to the climate crisis. She is founder and director of Young Voices on Climate Change. She has recently produced a series of films through her non-profit Young Voices on Climate Change specifically dedicated to helping the voices of environmentally-concerned young people be heard by featuring youth success stories in a series of DVDs. The short films show California kids getting a ban on plastic bags; Florida students saving their school $53,000 in energy costs; and Felix Finkbeiner, an 11-year-old German boy planting a million trees. Her film Olivia's Birds and the Oil Spill features a girl from Islip, New York who raised $200,000 to help save and clean oiled birds from oil spills. Her most recent film, produced in 2013, Longing for a Local Lunch documents 4 high school students in Great Barrington, Massachusetts who succeed in getting fresh, local, healthy & nutritious cafeteria and calculate the "food miles" that their cafeteria fare travels.